


More Than This

by BoxWineConfessions



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Luckily an angsty teen in need of a mentor remembers who he is, Otabek is the forgotten hero of Kazakhstan, Yuri and Otabek are happily married, oldtabek, otabek becomes a mentor, otabek doesn't want to be anybody's mentor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 19:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12515060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: Otabek, forgotten hero of Kazhakstan, isn’t looking to be anybody’s mentor. All he wants is to bring his husband breakfast in bed, and bro it up with his best friend that lives a continent away. For better or for worse, a strange boy at the rink has other ideas. Otabek doesn’t give instruction. He doesn’t offer advice. He doesn’t really do much of anything. The boy latches on, and stays near as if he is lost. Otabek finds this particularly humorous considering that it is clear that his life is in the rink.





	More Than This

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betelxeuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betelxeuse/gifts).



Otabek rises well before his alarm goes off. The light seeps into the parted blinds, and casts  shining playful rays across his own skin, as well as the lump beside him in bed. Otabek pulls down the duvet, revealing a soft mop of finely spun, golden hair. He kisses the crown of his partner’s head, and cannot stop his lips from tugging into a smile as Yuri stirs next to him. 

Otabek treads into the kitchen, nearly stepping on no less than four hungry, overpriced pieces of fluff. His entry is met with a choir of “mew, mew, mew,” as he ignores their cries in favor of making their master breakfast. 

“You know that I prefer him over you,” he says with a smile. “After I cook,” but before he does the breakfast dishes. They know this by now. 

Otabek can smell the acrid scent of natural gas which accented by the clicking of the stove and the heat of the flame. He rests Yuri’s beloved Le Creuset skillet over the flame, and goes through actions he once thought mundane. Now? Now, the morning light catches on the gold band around his ring finger, making the pale dawn light a little bit brighter. Now, cherishes each opportunity that he gets to make two egg white omelettes, one with cheese and spinach, and the other with mushroom. 

Otabek first brings the omelette with cheese into the bedroom with a cup of fresh brewed black coffee. Then, he returns to the kitchen to fetch his own and returns to the bedroom. Although he sees this sight every morning, it never fails to take his breath away. 

Yuri is awake now, albeit barely so. His hair is frizzy and matted. His legs are drawn up close to his chest.  All four cats are littered about him meowing in hunger and unwarranted self importance. “Morning,” Yuri’s voice is as calm as an untouched rink. These moments never last for long. Chainsaw will knock over a mug of coffee, or Princess will start hacking up a hairball. Their phones will ring, or Otabek will become so swept up in tending to Yuri, he’ll realize that he’s running late. 

“Hey.” Otabek rejoins Yuri in bed, and Yuri steals a kiss from him when he’s back underneath the covers. 

“You have class today?” Yuri asks in between greedy mouthfuls of food. 

“Yes,” Otabek responds simply. “I have rink time after.” He’d offer to not  go, but he knows that Yuri would be more upset at the prospect than he is sitting alone at home. His eyes linger to the crutches that are rested on Yuri’s side of the bed. His recovery is good, and his husband should give himself more credit for all that he’s accomplished in a few short weeks. 

“Alright,” Yuri responds his hair falls back into his face. “Company’s shit,” he says looking towards the cats. “But I’ll manage.”

* * *

 

“He’s so weird.” At first he believes that they’re talking about him. They’ve done it before in varying tones from hushed whispers to brash and unapologetic questioning, “what is wrong with you Dastan?” His hands shake as he enters the combination of his locker, and his ears burn whenever they talk.

“Creepy even. I swear I could feel him staring at me all practice. Why?”

Except, they aren’t talking about him for once. The feeling of relief that washes over him is like emerging from under the water after holding his breath for a long time. “Cause he’s old and washed up.  He can barely do a triple. That’s how old he is.” By now, Dastan knows who they’re talking about. His rink time overlaps with theirs. He wears an all-black warm up suit, and a large pair of headphones. He’s never so much as said a word to any of them. 

“Ah, keep away from him,” Yerzhan scrapes his blades across the ice screeching to a halt only inches away from where the stranger performs a simple step sequence without music or a coach. “He’ll steal your energy for his own sad triples.”

On the rink, their hostility shifts from him to the brooding stranger, and for that Dastan is grateful. Dastan never asked to be the way that he is, unable to think of anything to say, even when he desperately wants to talk and be friends. He never asked his mother to pack him lunches made of fragrant leftovers every single day which make everyone think that he is strange. It’s not his fault that he’s allergic to most things, and can’t go down to the smoothie stand with everyone else on break. It’s not his fault that he’s worn the same costume the past two seasons. It was expensive, and they had to ask for money from grandma and grandpa to buy it. It’s not his fault that he  _ likes _ to read the long novels assigned to them in advanced literature and English class. It makes the monster busted triple that hides in his heart and makes him tremble with anxiety go away, if not but for a moment. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t go to ballet with the rest right after their rink time has ended. 

Okay, maybe  _ that _ was his fault. The instructor growled at him last April through gritted teeth, “are you stupid? My infant son can understand these steps, and he cannot even walk,” and he never went back. 

The stranger, with his brooding stare and his jet black aura should be able to handle it right? Because if he can’t who can? All Dastan knows for certain is that for nine blissful days he becomes invisible to the rink’s social hierarchy. Yezhan exists at the top. Then, Max, Ravil, and Kosim fall in line behind him. Then, him, and then the stranger exists at the bottom.  

Of course, like all good things that come to him, good fortune quickly stagnates. 

Dastan always tosses his things in the away team’s penalty box far away from where everyone else stored their things on the rink. It gives him less of a chance to have his phone hidden where he cannot not reach, or to have his guards stolen by Yerzan and the rest. Apparently, the stranger stores his things there too. Bent beneath the bench and rummaging through his things, he doesn’t have to see to  _ know.  _ Dastan can hear thunderous slow steps, and he can feel the wood creek beneath skate blades. A chill runs down his spine, and that’s all he needs.

Dastan resurfaces from his duffel bag, and catches the stranger’s eyes but for a moment, and in that moment the ice on the rink around them is melted away. His heart pounds in his chest, and the blood rushes into his ears making him feel as if he’s been caught doing something very, very wrong. 

  
He can see the soft wisps of gray in his jet black hair. He can see the dark circles underneath his eyes. His brows are tightly knit and his jaw is clenched firm. His body is so tense, that nothing about the way that he carries himself suggest he could land  _ any _ jump and yet Dastan has watched him cycle through an immense repertoire successfully. Everything about his demeanor says, “stay far away.”

* * *

 

Otabek wouldn’t normally say anything to the kid. He seems to have a hard enough time, and the last thing that he probably wants or needs is him doling out an unsolicited opinion. He himself always hated that whenever he was younger. 

Yet, it’s much like whenever he and Yuri started seeing each other. The way that he held his chopsticks made him wince. It’s much like whenever Jean-Jacques bought his first pair of boots, and didn’t treat the leather. Whenever he witnesses something so blatantly and openly wrong being committed by someone who simply does not know better, he feels compelled to assert himself. 

So, against his better judgement, Otabek inserts himself into this stranger’s life uninvited, and tugs at something deep and personal.

* * *

 

Much to Dastan’s surprise, the stranger opens his mouth. Nothing comes out at first, as if the words crumble to dust in his throat and dry out his mouth in the process. Dastan is no stranger to this feeling at all. It isn’t until his bag is slung over his shoulder and his skate guards are popped into place does he hear the stranger’s voice. It’s deep, but smooth. Every syllable that the stranger utters makes him feels like he’s being clapped on the shoulder and taken by surprise. “You get a lot of air on your jumps. That will be good for quads.” 

Dastan’s throat constricts, and he sputters over the syllables. In an instant be foolishly believes that maybe Yerzhan’s jeers are the truth, and now that he’s been touched by the stranger, his ability to do any jump whatsoever will be stolen. By the time that he manages to stammer out, “I can’t even land triples!” It comes off as a half shout, high pitched and defensive.  When he turns around to face the stranger once more, he finds himself alone.

* * *

 

Otabek has been resting precariously on precipice of asleep and awake for some time now. Grading the first essays of the quarter always does that to him. He’s teaching a first year writing class right now, and first years are always so over eager to prove themselves as writers, that the story is obscured in flowery prose. The excessive adjective use tangles around Otabek’s brain, and lulls him to sleep gently. 

He opens his eyes to the sight of his husband, blurry, but smiling. “You need to go to bed.” 

“’m in bed,” Otabek responds. 

Yuri reaches for his reading glasses, pulls them slowly off of his face, and leans over his body to set them on his nightstand. He feels warm, and smells of the rose scented bubble bath that he likes so very much. As his eyes draw slowly shut once again, he can hear the soft flip of paper around him, as Yuri picks up the essay’s he’d left scattered about.

The bed dips underneath Yuri’s weight, and Otabek drifts back to sleep.

* * *

 

Dastan doesn’t sleep well these days. He’s too old to believe in monsters under the bed, but whenever he closes his eyes there’s something hairy and ugly that taunts him in his dreams. It tugs at his chest, and pulls him down onto the ice and burns his skin. When he was younger, he was good at skating. Never at the top of his classes, but close. Now? Something has slipped, but despite the fact that others are getting better, and he’s staying the same, he still wants nothing more than to come to the rink. 

At night, he keeps the monster at bay by watching videos on his phone until his eyes are blurry and he has to close them. He can’t decide which routine is his favorite, and it goes in rotation. For the longest time, it was  _ Sammarkand Overture _ . The birth of a nation, national pride, it made him think of the photo on the mantle of his father in full dress uniform. After that, he thought his favorite was the Beijing routine. He debuted a new quad, and his costume shone like polished gold. Like his name. 

Now, Dastan more or less understands that he likes  _ all _ of it. He likes his style because it’s so raw and it’s so powerful. He likes him because no matter where he was in his career, Kazakhstan was always in the forefront of his mind. He didn’t want fame, or money. Instead, he did it because he loved it. Dastan feels that way. He doesn’t land every jump, and his choreography isn’t always the smoothest. In the brief fleeting seconds between takeoff and landing, whether he sticks it or he busts his ass, he feels free. That’s why he keeps doing it. If his voice feels heavy in his throat when he speaks, and his feet feel heavy in the dance studio, they feel weightless on ice. 

He trains at the same rink as Otabek did. He has scores similar to those that Otabek had at his age. As he watches the videos, he knows that if he could skate half as well as Otabek, everything would change. He’d be known for being skilled, and not known as the lummox on ice who can’t even manage dance lessons. He’d be seen as passionate, and not as someone who didn’t know when to quit. 

That’s what he is, right? Passionate.

* * *

 

Otabek kills the bike and immediately reaches for his phone, which is carefully stored in the interior pocket of his jacket. It’s been going off repeatedly, but he hasn’t been able to get off of the highway until just now. Immediately fearing that something happened to Yuri, he feels a mixture of relief and annoyance when he sees his sister has called him seven times in rapid succession. 

Otabek reluctantly taps her name on his missed call list, and holds the phone to the receiver. 

“My wedding is ruined,” Farida wails, and Otabek holds the receiver far away from his ear. “Mom said she won’t pay for the Valentino dress, because it shows my tattoo. 

Otabek slowly takes a gloved hand down his face in frustration. He hasn’t had enough caffeine for this yet. “I don’t understand what you want me to do about this.” It was after all, the kind of objectively bad tattoo that only one can get at nineteen. The fact that she still defends it at twenty-nine would be reprehensible, if it were anyone other than Farida. 

“Oh my god, Beka. I can't believe I used to think you were cool. You're just as old fashioned as mom and dad now.”

* * *

 

In the morning, it’s even easier to keep the monster at bay. He wakes long before his alarm goes off, finds something to eat, and catches the first train out of his station.  At the rink, there’s a group of ice dancers that have the morning session. Ms. Murat, the ice dance coach has never told him to leave so long as he stays out of the way. 

Dastan loves the rink in the morning. Everything in his mind feels cloudy until the frost on his brain is chipped away slowly but surely by the sound of blades against ice. Or, it is melted away by the hot fragrant tea that the coaches brew in large batches and keep near the locker rooms. In those moments before he’s fully awake, he lands clean doubles and does textbook perfect pancake spins. Too bad his own coach isn’t around to ever see. 

That morning, Dastan gets one pick out onto the ice, looks up across the rink for a moment, and his heart stops. 

The stranger is here too, even in the early morning hours. He moves about the rink in furious choctaws that make his own legs burn in agony. In sharp defiance of the gray hairs that are scattered across the top of his head, he bursts into a high and powerful jump. 

_ One _

_ Two _

_ Three _

_ Four.  _

Four rotations without hesitation. Four rotations and, he comes down hard. He lands shakily. Dastan swears that it makes his bones ache by just watching,  but there isn’t a single shift in his expression.

* * *

 

Otabek has good days, and he has bad days. He has days where he hurts so much that he cannot get out of bed. He has days that he screws his eyes shut, and he allows Yuri to treat him like a child. He lets Yuri smooth his hair, and he lets Yuri kiss his temple until the medication kicks in. 

As soon as Yuri is fully healed, he has an appointment with his own specialist. A simple procedure with a long recovery time. A simple procedure that he urged Yuri to have done, but fears undergoing himself. 

Less frequent are the days where feels as if he’s eighteen again. Less frequent are the days where he feels like he’s never torn or broken anything. His feet feel lighter than air, and his body works with him and not against him. Of course, it’s never on days that Jean-Jacques has time to Skype. It’s never when Yuri can join him at the rink. These kinds of good days only come when there’s no one to share it with. 

Otabek supposes that he doesn’t mind. The whole world knows how high and how powerful his Salchows were. Perhaps it’s less important if they know how high and how powerful they can be now. 

Maybe, just maybe, he only decides this after he lands the quad. Maybe he decides this only after he can feel the stifling, wonder filled weight of a young skater’s eyes upon him.

* * *

 

There’s a long walkway from the main entrance of the rink by the skate rental that wraps around the arena and goes all the way back to the locker rooms. From the water stained ceiling tiles to the sticky matted carpet, Dastan knows this walkway well. So, why has he never  _ noticed _ the photos and the framed magazine covers on the wall.  

Right in front of him is a photo of the medalists in Pyeongchang in 2018. A forlorn man stands on the podium with clenched jaw and tight knit brows. He holds the bronze away from him, as if he finds it physically repulsive.  To his right, there is a page of a newspaper. 2022 and Beijing. The front page is comprised of a series of photos. A tall and powerful quad that he’d bet money was a Salchow. Another pained expression upon the podium. Dastan’s eyes drift further down the row, but he knows what’s coming. He’s stared at these photos more than any other skater that comes here. “Kazakhstan's Hope,” and a photo of his hero, Otabek Altin carrying the flag of Kazakhstan in the opening ceremony in Almaty 2026. 

Everyone in Kazakhstan knows what happened. It wasn’t some big upset; Altin was at the end of his career. His routines were executed perfectly. There were just stronger athletes, younger athletes that could bust through quads at the end of their programs and cinch medals. Realization that his childhood hero is the strange, often ostracized man at the rink nips at his feet like lace bite. Makes him backtrack across the sticky carpet towards the skate rental because he cannot face him today.

* * *

 

No one came to office hours that afternoon, and there was a faculty meeting in the morning. Otabek never speaks at faculty meetings. So, it’s highly possible that he hasn’t uttered a word to anyone since that morning when he kissed Yuri goodbye and told him that he loved him. Otabek can’t say that he minds. The quiet of his office was augmented by the musty scent of his father’s old books, and the constant scratch of pen against paper. That afternoon, he wrote with a purpose and a flow that he hadn’t found in months before Yuri’s operation. 

The steady roar of the engine on his commute over was comforting, and it forced him to think about all the finer nuances of what he was actually trying to write. 

It’s just that, it’s been awhile, and he’s so used to others now. It’s been a few hours, and Jean-Jacques didn’t answer the phone when he called. It’s just that, they’re well into the afternoon session. He’s spent well over an hour watching this boy with sandy brown hair, crooked teeth, and a pullover that was bought for him to grow into botch the Salchow so horribly...Like mashed dumplings and chopsticks, or leather boots and Canadian slush, he feels compelled to do something about the jump. 

* * *

 

“You don’t go with them?” His voice is deep, but simultaneously quiet. Dastan has to question if he even heard him speak. After all, he said it while they passed in opposite directions in the on the ice. The rink monitor doesn’t seem to care that this singular man is skating in the opposite direction, but now he understands why this strange and quiet stranger seems to get away with whatever he wants.

There’s nothing but the sharp and constant sound of  _ shunk, shunk, shunk _ of blades against ice. When they cross paths again, Dastan notices that the large black earphones rest around his neck. It’s almost as if it is an invitation to speak, and so he responds, “They’re going to dance lessons. I don’t go to dance lessons.” 

They loop in opposite directions. When they approach one another again, Otabek swear to god, smiles at him. His mouth is barely turned upward at the ends, but it’s there. “Didn’t go to ballet either.” Like it’s some secret that he hasn’t read about it in figure skating magazines since he was a kid. 

Otabek doesn’t say anything to him after that. Dastan wants to say so much more to him, but the words don’t come until after they’ve passed each other. By the time they loop around and cross paths again, he loses his nerve. 

Otabek moves to the penalty box to fix his laces. Dastan does the same, despite not actually needing to do so. 

“Your triples are bad.” No shit. He can’t even  _ land _ one, let alone do it in a way that would score him points in a competition.

Otabek doesn’t even turn away from his skates to meet his gaze while he says it. He simply toys with his laces, swipes his finger across the screen on his phone, and puts his headphones on. “I could teach you.”  Otabek rises, walks out of the penalty box, and immediately launches into 3-turn and simple camel spin. 

Dastan doesn’t even walk the three steps over to the door of the penalty box. He crawls over the walls of the box, and hits the ice hard. He tears across the rink at breakneck speed, and only when he’s dangerously close to Otabek does he skid to a stop and yell, “Why!?” It’s one thing to have a hero. It’s another thing to have your hero pity you. That’s what it’s got to be. If he watches so much of what happens at the rink, he has to have seen and he has to have heard all the horrible things that have happened to him here. 

His lungs burn like fire. His ears ring from shame and embarrassment, but he’s got to know before he charges forward and accepts what he wants so desperately. 

Otabek rotates on single blade as if Dastan provides no interruption.  He completes the rotations, and then stands on two blades once again. Otabek looks upon him with eyes that burn with an intensity that makes him feel as if he’s done something wrong. 

“I just assumed that we were alike. That’s all.”

* * *

 

Otabek isn’t looking for a mentee, or a student, or anything like that. He knows he’s not well suited to the life of being a coach. This became abundantly clear to him the first season that he spent off of the professional circuit. He stayed with Jean-Jacques and Isabella. During the day he worked with Jean-Jacques at his training camp. During the evenings, he stared at the ruddy mound of flesh that JJ and Isabella claimed was their baby. It seemed as if children followed him everywhere that summer.  No matter how hard he worked at it, he never became more comfortable with them. They made his palms itch, and his head ache. 

But he also understands Dastan’s predicament. He understands what it’s like to have the “best” coach in Almaty. He knows what it is like when the “best”coach never went much dance.  beyond the novice level in the ISU. He understands what it is like to be one student among five or six assigned to a single coach. He knows what it is like to fall through the cracks and fall behind without. With intimate familiarity he knows how difficult it is to make up for it in turn. He feels it in deep haunting aches that ghost across his body each and every day. 

Otabek doesn’t give instruction. He doesn’t offer advice. He doesn’t really do much of anything. The boy latches on, and stays near as if he is lost. Otabek finds this particularly humorous considering that it is clear that his life is in the rink. From the way his toes look when he’s desperately trying to stop the bleeding in the locker room, to the way that he pulls crumpled reports and worksheets out of his backpack on the way out of the rink before he runs to catch the late morning train to school, this is where he’d most like to be.

* * *

 

They work together in the mornings, so his time with the coach after school goes uninterrupted. Sometimes they spend the entire time on the ice. Other times, they simply run laps in the elevated track above the rink. Regardless, there are few words between them. 

At first, Dastan finds it strange. He’s spent years thinking about what he’d say to his hero if they had the chance to meet. What good would it do him to say that he’s pretty sure Otabek flubbed the flip in his 2020 World’s performance because of the entry into his combination spin? That kind of thing is strange, unsettling, and it’s probably why he doesn’t have many friends anyway. 

Conversely, he’s seen enough interviews to know that Otabek is a near silent man. His responses to the press are always tight lipped and terse. However, he’d always assumed they’d find something to talk about. In reality, this isn’t typically the case. 

Dastan pops the entrance to his triple toe loop, and lands on the ice with an undignified, “ _ oof _ ” He can hear the scratch of skates approach, and Otabek’s voice cuts through the noise and sends shivers down his spine. The command is simple, “again.” 

Dastan rights himself, and does as he’s told. He goes in on the three turn, steps to the back outside edge, and holds his breath and closes his eyes as he launches himself high. 

He only opens his eyes once again when his bones have stopped rattling from being slammed onto the ground.

* * *

 

Talking to him is so difficult it is almost physically painful. That is how Otabek knows that they are more alike than different. He knows because that is how it felt when he first started talking to Jean-Jacques. It’s how he felt when he first met Yuri. 

Despite the fact that Dastan is inconsistent and sloppy, he’s the first one at the rink, and the last one to leave. Watching him fall makes his own joints ache. Watching him get back up makes his heart swell with pride. That is how he knows that the boy has potential beyond the novice level. That is how he knows that the boy deserves something more than a third rate coach. Bullheadedness isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing.  It got him two Olympic medals after all.

* * *

 

Otabek approaches him again, and he knows what’s next, a stern and demanding, “again,” although it never comes. Dastan feels frozen to the rink floor as he looks up at Otabek, who towers over him in a long black pea coat buttoned neatly at the waist. Otabek offers him his hand. Dastan accepts. 

“You go into the pick assist too quickly,” Otabek says as he pulls him upward. “Inhale. Pick. Exhale. Stop holding your breath.” 

“That’s stupid.” Because there’s no way it can be that simple. 

Otabek doesn’t say anything in response. He simply shrugs his shoulders and skates in the opposite direction. 

Begrudgingly, Dastan does as he’s told. Inhale, pick assist, exhale. The jump pops awkwardly halfway, and before he knows what’s going on, he’s tumbling downward on the ice. Fastidiously, Dastan continues to do as he’s told.  Inhale, pick assist, exhale. He gets more airtime, and he can get the rotations in, but it doesn’t stop him from crashing down. He doesn’t listen to his coach when he tells him to give ballet another try. He didn’t listen to the ballet instructor when he told him to stop wasting his mother’s money. He’ll listen to Otabek. Inhale, pick assist, exhale. Over, and over again.

* * *

 

“I don’t see how you’d be rubbing off on me. I haven’t seen you in person in almost a year,” Otabek huffs into the phone. There’s a baby crying in the background, and that’s all it takes for him to be transported back to Jean-Jacques’ childhood home. Toronto was ten months of cacophonous fever dream: babies crying, dogs barking, shouting, and the sound of MTV cranked too high from the living room television. 

“Do you even know how hard it is to get four kids onto an international flight Beks? You gotta come to us,” JJ chirps into the phone. 

“Do you know how hard it is to get a recovering tiger out of the house?” Otabek smiles into the phone. 

“Altruism suits you.” 

“I’m not sure if-“ 

“Look,” there is a rustle of fabric on the end of the line, and Otabek can imagine with perfect clarity JJ trying to rebalance the phone between his chin and his shoulder while he holds at least one baby. “Kid wouldn’t get off your lawn, so teach him how to do a 3S.” 

“Hm.” 

“JJ style.” 

“You’re breaking up Jean. I suddenly can’t understand.”

* * *

 

Inhale, pick assist, exhale. He waits for the crash of his side hitting the ice, but it never comes. Instead, he lands shakily on his blades, and stumbles in jerky forward backward motions. Desperately, he tries to steady himself and not fall on his ass. Dastan lands the triple, but not in the near silence that they experience in the morning. No, instead, he lands the triple during afternoon practice. Better yet, he does it while his coach is yelling at him to get off the ice and do cool down. It means that everyone in his coach’s group has already left the rink, and so they stare at him with harsh scrutinous gazes that burn like lace bite. 

He comes out of the jump facing the home team penalty box. He can see his rink mates with wolfish eyes simply waiting to find the perfect insult. He can hear the high pitched wolf whistle from Yerzhan. He rotates slightly, and across the rink, he can see Otabek in his long black peacoat. His mouth is pulled into a smile. 

Of course, Yerzhan lands a triple the very next week. He taunts, “and I did it without the help of a creepy old man.”

* * *

 

At regionals, it is his mother, not his coach, nor Otabek that combs his hair back, slick with gel. It’s his mother that lets the hem out of the bottom of his costume, so that it covers his growing body. It’s his mother that rolls it dutifully with a lint roller the day of regionals. 

It’s Dastan that takes his music on a white flash drive to the sound booth. 

His coach claps him on the shoulder, and tells him to focus on the triples. He tells him to focus on making his best impact on the short program. It’s  _ so  _ incredibly helpful that it makes him want to smack the old dude in the face. No fucking shit. He knew that already.  

Before, he always knew where he stood. Do the routine, get a score, go home. Nothing would change, but nothing got worse. He’s been stagnant since he first started landing doubles consistently, but his dream was never killed completely. Now? Caught between  _ almost  _ being able to charge ahead of his rink mates and always being a step behind, he feels an immense sense of dread tugging at his blades. 

Of course it transfers to the ice. He flubs the combination jump, and a double-double is changed into a double-single for the sole purpose of saving his ass. The triple is shaky. He rounds out the jumps with an axel, that is, for whatever reason good. Maybe it’s because he catches sight of his mom in the audience. Maybe it’s because by that point in the program all of his inhibitions are shattered completely. There’s nothing left to lose. 

When he hauls himself off of the rink to wait for his score, he recognizes powerful dark figure within the crowd, and his heart sinks. It wasn’t exactly a secret that regionals were today, but he hadn’t invited him.

He’s not his mentor. They don’t even talk. All he does is tell him to do jumps  _ again _ . And the fact that he missed the podium this time strips away the last bit of hero worship that he clung to. 

In the locker room, Otabek hands him a roll of white gauze without a word of comfort or solace. His feet are bleeding again.

* * *

 

The next morning, Otabek is reminded why he’s avoided young skaters like Dastan for so long. They expect the answer to questions that Otabek has spent a lifetime chasing after.  Dastan asks with a sense of entitlement, as if he doesn’t realize that Otabek himself does not possess the answers, even after all of this time.  As he approaches the rink, his own gear feels like a thousand and one pounds strapped against his back.  He knows what Dastan is experiencing quite intimately. It’s a low rolling question, “what now?” because one jump doesn’t fix the world. One jump doesn’t make the bigger problems in a routine go away, if anything it makes them more pronounced. 

Otabek enters the rink, and walks down the long hallway which leads down to the arena. He finds Dastan paused in front of the newspaper clippings, the placards, and the framed photos. He stands directly in front of the photo of the three of them in Pyeongchang. Yuri is pictured in the center with gold, and then Jean-Jacques with silver, and finally him. What the boy doesn’t know is how he spent the night of the closing ceremony pouring drinks for Jean-Jacques insisting that he’d be the perfect father, that he didn’t have to be like Alain. What the boy didn’t know is how he asked Yuri to marry him for the very first time. Yuri said, “no,” but for some strange and lovely reason, it only made him love Yuri more.   

“How the fuck can you just come here, skate every day, and not give a fuck that no one knows who you are?” His words are blunt little weapons that cannot hurt someone like Otabek, who has been awarded enough joy by now that he can ignore these kinds of jabs. Of course Dastan is hurting, and so he’s desperate to know that others close to him can hurt too. “You were Kazakhstan's hero. Now you’re taunted by the very kids that used to worship you.” His voice cracks, and the display makes Otabek’s chest tight with discomfort. “How do you live with that?” 

If he were a strong man, he’d honestly tell him that he finds it far more comforting to be forgotten. The days where he was brought out of the box every four years and paraded about for interviews hurt him far more than the years on the ice. 

Nevertheless, he isn’t necessarily a strong man. Otabek shuffles across the carpet, and goes to find Mrs. Murat’s tea kettle.

Upon his return, Dastan accepts the tea, but he doesn’t drink it right away.  Once again, Otabek will rely on others to do the speaking for him.

* * *

 

With his free hand, Otabek extracts his phone from his pocket. He mashes the buttons, puts it on speaker, and then there is ringing on the other end of the line. “Jean,” Otabek speaks right away, and Dastan can feel his heartbeat quicken. “My friend wants to know how I can still stand you after you beat me to the podium so many times.” 

“Beka,” the voice is warm, legitimate, and everything he’s heard on old interviews and then some. “You felt me from afar. I’m trying to help Em with her math homework, and I was just telling her that you were always way better at geometry than me.” There’s a pause on the line followed by, “To answer your question, I think it has something to do with the fact that we’re friends Beka. I can’t speak for you, but that’s what kept me from socking you in the jaw when you won a Grand Prix Final gold before I did.” The man on the other line continues in a meandering pattern of one sided conversation, “You should come out. We closed on the lake house with a boat. It’s really nice. We should go to New York sometime, I hear that-“ 

“That’s enough Jean.” Otabek’s smile is so wide, Dastan has to turn his face and make sure that’s what he’s really doing. “Thank you Jean.” And he hits the little red “end” button on the phone. 

* * *

 

Otabek walks back toward the skate rental, out the automatic double doors, and to a jet black motorcycle. Dastan follows him without a word. Otabek gestures to the bike, “no practice this morning.” Otabek kickstarts the bike and the engine turns over with a thunderous roar. Otabek speaks at his normal tone over the engine, but he can hear him perfectly. “Coming or not?” 

Dastan first donned a pair of skates when he was five years old at a classmate’s birthday party at five years old. If you had asked him then if he wanted to ride on the back of Otabek Altin’s motorcycle, he would’ve adamantly shouted, “YES!” 

At thirteen, he finds it awkward. You aren’t supposed to be that close to another person. You aren’t supposed to…What if people thought? The cool air blasts his face and the tips of his ears, and the engine rumbles beneath them, and soon enough he forgets. 

From the outside, the apartment looks like a large looming black obelisk, tall and sleek. For a moment, it’s almost offensive to Dastan that Otabek can exist in any realm outside of the rink. That is where he’s seen him in real life and on screen for years and years. Otabek takes him through an elegant foyer cloaked in marble. He presses the call button for the elevator, and ushers Dastan inside. As the elevator climbs to the twenty-fifth floor, Dastan can hear his own heart beat over the purr of the elevator cables. 

He isn’t exactly sure what he expected on the other side of the sleek mahogany wood door. He certainly didn’t expect Otabek to open the door with the jingle of his keys, and a sniffled, “babe,” to ring out from somewhere in the apartment. “What are you doing home?” 

Otabek strides past him, and Dastan follows him hesitantly into the living room. Spread out on the sofa, like an oversized cat basking in the sun’s rays is a man with long blonde hair. Crutches are propped up against the end table, and his foot is elevated on the end of the sofa. It’s quite clear who he is. He’s stared at his photo more times than he’s willing to admit. Otabek leans over the other man, and Dastan can  _ hear  _ the smack of lips against lips even though he does his best to avert his eyes. 

“My friend wanted to meet you.” 

“Oh,” Yuri pushes his hair back with a smile. “You’re Otabek’s protégée.” Yuri smooths his long hand across his mint colored V-neck shirt.  He wears a gold band around his finger, and he wonders if Otabek wears one too. In his heart, he knows that he does. He’s just missed it even after all of these mornings spent together. The words spoken between them today represent the most they’ve ever spoken to one another. “I would’ve come to see you at regionals but…” He gestures to his crutches. “You fuckin know how hard it is?” 

Otabek looks down at the floor sheepishly, as if he’s trying to conceal some kind of embarrassment.

* * *

 

“I’m not your protégée, and I’m not marrying Yerzhan if that’s what you’re fucking getting at.” Dastan says three days after he visited Otabek’s apartment. 

Otabek stops skating abruptly, turns on the blades, and turns to face him. His nostrils flare as he stares him down with the heavy gaze that he’s grown used to. It’s the only thing that’s out of place, and it’s the only indication that he has that Otabek is upset. “I wasn’t insinuating that. Run through your routine.” 

Up until then, Otabek’s voice has always scared him despite it being neither loud or accusatory, unlike his coaches or the teachers at school. Now, he finds it irritating. If this is some kind of, “you should try to make friends,” discussion he’s done because…Literally every other adult has had that discussion with him. 

Dastan queues the song on his phone, shoves in his earbuds, and takes off into his first jump hard. A double-double combination that he hasn’t been able to land consistently. He nails the first, flubs the second, but shakes it off. He got enough rotations in that he can enter the step sequence. 

When he emerges he feels as if his lungs are going to explode. His vision is tunneled around the edges. The sound of his gloved hands clapping against one another rises above the sound of his own ragged breathing. It’s almost enough to cover his shame that he’s this winded after going through his free skate. Why the fuck couldn’t he do this at regionals?

“You asked me how I dealt with it.” Otabek says in response to the conversation which died long ago. "It’s not the kind of thing that can be taught. It’s something that is gained over many, many years. It’s something that he’d rather die for now than go without." Otabek clenches his jaw, trapping the words that he had yet to speak.  He forces himself to take a long pause, and then he moves forward, speaking slowly and cautiously. “I have more than this,” he says a he glides across the ice. “It’s how I deal with losing, and how I stay grounded after winning. Someday you will too. For now, do the Sal again.”

 


End file.
